Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Artspace Liberti presents its March/April exhibition of Rubens Ghenov's paintings, "ie: Brazilein Chaekkorias, rotted one note". This exhibition runs from March 4- April 24, 2011. There will be a reception for the artist on Friday, March 4 from 6:30-9:30PM.

The reception will also include a sound composition from Milton Jaula, also known as Gaiolinha. This composition will also be available as a free download as the opening of exhibition approaches. Follow this link for the download: http://soundcloud.com/milton-jaula

Gal Coastal - 20x15", acrylic, graphite, spray paint on linen

Compilation of artist statements:

"My work is concerned with fact, fiction and a subsequent offspring of paraficiton. In these recent works, I have been concerned in placing these fictive and factual elements within a narrative and architectural structure, taking inspiration from Korean Chaekkori (scholar's accoutrements) paintings and the conflicting architecture of São Paulo's sprawling favelas and its Latin American modernist skyscrapers. These "objects" are displayed upon and simultaneously support shelves of pau-brasil, the dark red, pigmented wood that begat the country's name.

...

I work as if a writer under the guises of different pseudonyms or like Fernando Pessoa, heteronyms, performing vicariously through them or simply as myself. The stories concoct folklore and vice versa, reciprocally feeding one another. As a story teller, whether in fact or fiction, I am not interested in the terminus but intrigued by the seeds left over from what has been, from tangents and births which accumulate possibilities for reinvention, also looking to depict the spiritual with idioms of the physical.The stories never end, but rather birth new personae expanding the vernacular of the work.

...

The work also takes on a plethora of media as each piece calls for specific materials, be they painting, drawing, sculpture or sound."

The Elliptical Professor, vol. 1 - 72x60", acrylic on canvas

Biographical information about Rubens Ghenov:

"At the age of 10, my family and I moved from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for two years, where my father had found new work as a school principal. We lived in a building situated between a tobacco factory and an enormous favela, sitting on the side of a hill or the morro. Coming home after school I would open the living room window and spend hours watching the morro life. Kids flying kites atop make shift building's rooftops, people hanging laundry from telephone poles to windows, houses painted in bright colors, brick buildings juxtaposed to tin houses with trees growing in between its cracks. At night, the lights peering out of windows would create a constellation of stars on the mount emanating the booming sound of drums out of the darkness from sunset to dawn. The favela was stacked, houses upon houses giving me, the viewer, a flattened idea of its space. Through the window of my third floor apartment I watched people walking in and out of its make shift construct, negating its flatness. A Persian miniature painting made out of Brazil's struggling class stacked like a shelf in the view of my window. Worlds within a world within a world. A make shift constellation of 60 wattage bolts. The world in a mountain in a house in a window. As an immigrant from South America, my work embodies two voices, that of a Brazilian and that of a foreigner."

-----

The artists’ reception will be held on March 4th from 6:30-9:30PM at 2424 E York St in Philadelphia between Gaul and Cedar Sts.

While the gallery does not maintain regular viewing hours, visits can be scheduled by appointment. Please e-mail us at artspaceliberti@gmail.com to arrange a visit. Viewing is also possible during Sunday church services between 10:30AM-12:00.

Artspace Liberti is a multi-discipline arts venue organized and maintained by liberti church east.